Stabbed in the Back
Confronting Back Pain in an Overtreated Society
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
Nortin M. Hadler knows backaches. For more than three decades as a physician and medical researcher, he has studied the experience of low back pain in people who are otherwise healthy. Hadler terms the low back pain that everyone suffers at one time or another “regional back pain.” In this book, he addresses the history and treatment of the ailment with the healthy skepticism that has become his trademark, taking the “Hadlerian” approach to backaches and the backache treatment industry in order to separate the helpful from the hype.
Basing his critique on an analysis of the most current medical literature as well as his clinical experience, Hadler argues that regional back pain is overly medicalized by doctors, surgeons, and alternative therapists who purvey various treatment regimens. Furthermore, he observes, the design of workers' compensation, disability insurance, and other “health” schemes actually thwarts getting well. For the past half century, says Hadler, back pain and back pain–related disability have exacted a huge toll, in terms of pain, suffering, and financial cost. Stabbed in the Back addresses this issue at multiple levels: as a human predicament, a profound social problem, a medical question, and a vexing public policy challenge. Ultimately, Hadler’s insights illustrate how the state of the science can and should inform the art and practice of medicine as well as public policy. Stabbed in the Back will arm any reader with the insights necessary to make informed decisions when confronting the next episode of low back pain.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nobody's going to like Hadler's prescription for backache neither patients, doctors nor the government. But here it is from the UNC professor and health-care reformist author (Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America): get over it. "The fact is that you may be best off if you do not tell anyone about your regional backache and try to get on with it," he declares. Hadler argues that no theory on what causes regional back pain "has stood up to scientific testing," and the myriad of treatments do more to sustain "an enormous treatment enterprise" than ease the pain. Hadler presents an impressive survey of what doctors, chiropractors and surgeons now offer for back pain and of the history and rationale for government disability programs. His conclusion is scornful. "Predicaments of life" such as back pain are not "injuries," Hadler insists. "eadache, heartburn, sleeplessness, altered bowel habits, and many regional musculoskeletal disorders... do not respond to treatment as diseases because they are not diseases." That's what you call a bitter pill but one that should trigger a much needed debate among health-care reformers. 5 illus.
